Reboot Camp – Daredevil

With the successful resurrection of some genre franchises in recent years, rebooting old properties has suddenly become popular in the entertainment industry. But for the successful reboots like “Battlestar Galactica”, “Doctor Who” and “Star Trek”, you have failures like “Bionic Woman”, “Flash Gordon” and “Knight Rider”. So, every so often we’ll take an old and somewhat flabby franchise that has a great premise or was just damn good fun (but hopefully both) and take it for a few runs around the writer’s circuit to see if it can be slimmed down and debuted to a modern audience…

I’d discussed doing this series of articles with friends, but as with all things in life, procrastination and an inability to get my and other collaborators’ shit together stalled the project, so it was thrown on the back burner. But recent discussions on the current state of Superhero TV series’ with some friends and how the landscape has changed in the past year prompted this article. So let’s try this again; normally I’d only be looking at an old property and see how it could be modernised, but I’m going to do something different first time out.

Up until last year, Smallville was the last successful licensed Superhero TV series. In 2012 the CW released Arrow; an update on DC’s Green Arrow that has been a success for the network; and Marvel/ABC announced S.H.I.E.L.D. (now Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). But prior to this the networks had gone with original IPs based on popular superhero themes and concepts in the hope of garnering an audience. The most successful of these was Heroes, but after its first season the show stumbled quite badly for a variety of reasons, not all of which were under the control of the production team. Since then we’ve had The Cape, No Ordinary Family, Misfits and Alphas. All of these are/were of varying degrees of quality, and the ones that didn’t last were with good reason.

Why this model was adopted is purely speculative on my part; an original IP is cheaper than buying the rights to an established character. There is also the added complication of now both major comic book companies characters being owned by respective major studios, making newcomers getting involved without complicated licensing agreements unlikely. Additionally, Smallville got a lot of attention and arguably success with its “No Tights, No Flights” policy; the first part of that clearly taken on board by other creative teams. Superhero costumes translated from comics into the real world are wacky lookin’, and to get it looking good and right usually costs a lot of money with no guarantees of success. We remember the amount of money that was thrown into the costume for the ’90s TV adaptation of The Flash (a show we’ll look back at soon on Nerdspan); to be fair it was worth it as it looked great, but it significantly upped the production costs for the TV series. Arrow being what it is managed to find the right balance of a realistic take on a superhero (and various supervillains) costume whilst flagging the costume’s comic book origins.

Prior to 2012, the closest we’d gotten to a new Superhero TV series based on an existing character recently is David E. Kelley’s Wonder Woman. NBC passed on the pilot with good reason. While it had its good points, elements of the production design, the script writing and the characterisation of Wonder Woman within her other identities were woeful. The CW made rumblings about a new take on the character called Amazon, but that’s now on hold in favour of a Flash TV series. And yet Rocket Raccoon is getting a film…

Stepping back a bit, whilst David E. Kelley is undeniably a brilliant television producer, Wonder Woman is not the character we’d want to see him produce a TV series for, despite his links with feminist icons (your mileage may vary on Ally McBeal’s status there, but I’m not going to wade into that). Kelley’s early work focussed on legal dramas, and after early successes he created a cynical and arguably more realistic legal drama than was considered the norm at the time, The Practice. The show initially focussed on a young working class Catholic raised lawyer running a struggling law firm and having to deal with the grim realities of taking on the not-so-innocent as clients whilst holding onto his morals and ethics.

That sounds like a good start for a Daredevil TV series to me.

Outside of the Marvel faithful, Daredevil has always been considered a B-List or lower superhero. But since his creation, in the hands of other writers he’s been fleshed out as a determined noir style vigilante who despite getting beaten down time and time again, manages to keep on going.

Daredevil has had two live action appearances; the first in The Incredible Hulk telemovie The Trial of the Hulk which was nothing special, and the 2003 film Daredevil starring Ben Affleck. The 2003 film is unfairly maligned in my opinion; it’s got some narrative problems, but as an adaptation of a comic book, it’s one of the more faithful ones. The theatrical cut removed an entire subplot involving Daredevil’s civilian identity Matt Murdock and his day job as a lawyer; helping an innocent man framed for a murder to go free. This gives us a good starting point for what a Daredevil TV series should be.

Using Kelley as a guide, a Daredevil series could start much like the first season of The Practice. Matt Murdock and his partner Franklin “Foggy” Nelson are running a struggling legal practice in the shitty neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen in modern-day New York (yes, I know it’s being gentrified now, but I digress). Murdock and Nelson generally only take “innocent” clients, but they’re starting to realise that there’s something out there in the criminal community, treading on the little guy and making New York an even rougher place to live and work. The media have dubbed this shadowy figure “The Kingpin”, and Murdock and Nelson are starting to feel his influence in their line of work more and more every day. Add to that the ethical dilemmas of running a small law firm whilst trying to stay away from better paying (read: guilty) clients, and you have a good start.

This element would also be enough to differentiate it from the only current competition, Arrow. Oliver Queen doesn’t have a day job; he pretends to be a rich wastrel whilst always being the vigilante known as “The Hood”, while Matt Murdoch has to balance his real life responsibilities with his chosen mission.

The next element of how a Daredevil TV series could be constructed doesn’t come from Kelley’s previous work but from the excellent procedural The Wire. If you’ve never seen this show, I highly recommend it. It can be rough going as it’s some of the bleakest, most depressing TV you’ll ever watch. But it is so good that it will ruin you for other police procedurals with the quality of its writing and characters.

Part of what made it work is that the police and the criminals they were hunting were given equal screen time, particularly in the first season. Daredevil works best when he’s up against major adversity, typically represented by the villains he faces. His main enemy is The Kingpin, and I’d suggest giving him equal screen time with plotlines that interweave between Murdock’s civilian and vigilante work. Show the Kingpin operating as the major criminal entity in New York, expanding his businesses throughout the city in a realistic fashion and dealing with realistic crimes. Wilson Fisk is a suave, educated and sophisticated criminal, but keep the crimes at a “street” level, with the Kingpin forging secret deals with corrupt city officials, making him the refined crime boss. Also make him pragmatic and vicious in his business dealings, and on the rare occasion where he has to get physical. Eventually he and his lieutenants will realise that there is something out there outside of the police and the media that is hunting him, and he will go to great pains to destroy it, calling in specialist help from the likes of out-of-town hitmen to put down this mysterious vigilante the media have dubbed “Daredevil”.

The final element of a Daredevil TV series would be the actual superhero component; the scenes where Matt Murdock is in the Daredevil costume, roaming the rooftops and alleyways of Hell’s Kitchen, stopping street crime or investigating cases he’s touched on in his day job. Keeping the “powers” at a low-level would be preferable; Daredevil is a talented martial artist and combatant, but he’s still just a man with all the vulnerabilities implied. But it is here the majority of your action would take place, along with the stranger elements that don’t fit into a legal or criminal procedural story. Here characters like Bullseye, Elektra, Stick, the ninjas of The Hand and even the Punisher would connect with Daredevil as he tries to keep his neighbourhood safe. Whilst costuming will be a hurdle (as shown above, the movie’s motorcycle leathers are a great place to start), the big issue that will need to sell the series as viable would be the action scenes. If they don’t work, the superhero element will fall down and take the rest of it with it. Surprisingly, we can go back to Kelley’s previous work for this.

In Boston Legal, actor Mark Valley was cast in the role of Brad Chase, a lawyer at the eccentric firm of Crane, Poole & Schmidt. Valley’s more recently had the lead role in the action series Human Target, where he played Christopher Chance, a reformed assassin now working as a bodyguard for hire. Human Target was an excellent series that was cancelled before it’s time, but its main strength was how impressive the action scenes were due to the partnership of the fantastic fight choreography & stunt team and Valley’s onscreen martial competence. That sort of partnership is what you’d want for a Daredevil TV series. Valley himself would make an excellent older and established Matt Murdock if you want to go that way rather than cast younger (which is what they did with the Ultimate version of Daredevil). If you could get the stunt & fight team from Human Target back to work with him, the action scenes would be perfect for Daredevil.

And yes, Human Target was based on a DC comic, and arguably a reboot from the original ’80s show, but it was far enough removed from the original premise and not a superhero show that we didn’t include it above.

Outside of that casting speculation, I’m not going to make any other suggestions. You’d want to get the best actors you could for the job who would take these roles seriously.

As with all genre TV, your series would have to have a bible, and the writers would have to stick with it. Set the “powers” level from the start and keep it there. Mine the comics for the more realistic storylines as a starting point, then try to tell them in a true crime fashion from the perspective of Murdock & Nelson, the Kingpin’s organisation, and Daredevil himself. The current run under Mark Waid is as good a starting point as any, with equal time being given to Murdoch’s role as a lawyer (now a consulting legal counsel) and as Daredevil. As the series progressed, you could strip story ideas from more classic storylines.

While the chances of such a show seeing the light of day are slim, they are better now that Marvel is clearly wanting to take its film universe into television as well, and Daredevil could be a good fit for that. Even more so now that Marvel Studios now has the rights back from FOX. We hope you’ll agree that the approach here is a viable example to attempt a new era of licensed superhero TV shows adhering to modern sensibilities, as well as giving the character of Daredevil a new lease on life in a live action setting.

But if you do manage to get a chance to talk to David E. Kelley, pitch him this and see what he says…